Copper Visions (3 page)

“We'll be quick.”

Sophie turned to the kid, still standing with his hand out, and dropped the coin in his palm. “Thank you for you help,” she said.

David took her by the elbow and hustled her into the building and down to her rooms. “We have to hurry. What do you need?”

“What do you mean, what do I need? I thought you were going by yourself,” Sophie said. “I can't afford to take a cab, especially if I don't know where it's going.”

“You have enough to pay for this one,” David said. “And we're going to get the rest of your money before we come back. Let me look at your ankle.”

“What?” Sophie asked. “Why do you want to look at my ankle? The driver is charging us for waiting.”

“Something is not right here,” David said. “I want to see if we can't get you a little more range out of your jewelry. Sit down if it would make you more comfortable.”

Sophie sat down in the chair that had previously been occupied by the dead man. David kneeled in front of her, pulling her leg up until it was almost completely out in front of her. She had to fight to keep herself from blushing but still felt the need to pull her skirt around her legs.

David poked at the light and frowned. He twisted the device around her ankle, testing the seams and inspecting the locking mechanism. “I don't suppose you have a key for this?”

“Why would I have a key?”

“Well, I would have thought they would have given you a way to take it off if there had been an emergency; say, the entire block caught fire and you had to run out of the range of the band.”

“Oh,” Sophie said. “No, I don't have a key.”

“What about the box it's connected to? Can you move it if you have to?”

“No,” Sophie said. “I'm stronger than I was but it's still far too heavy for me to lift. Besides, I think it's bolted to the floor.”

“Hmm,” David said, looking at the device again. “Where's the box? Maybe I can lift it.”

Sophie pointed to it sitting in the corner of her dining room. “I doubt it but good luck.”

David bent to the box and tried to move it; she'd been right, it was bolted to the floor. However, it looked like it was a black cover over something else and the cover could be removed, though not without effort. It made the horrible screech of metal being moved over metal without some kind of lubrication but it came off cleanly. Sophie looked over his shoulder at the device that was inside it.

“What's all that then?” David motioned for her to be quiet and move back. She sat back down and he moved to the device on her ankle again. “What are you-” she started then stopped when he motioned for her to be quiet again. He gripped the device with both hands and pulled. The lock popped open and it fell off.

“David!” Sophie gasped. “You can't!”

“Hush, Sophie,” he said, quickly dismantling the rest of it. When it opened up, he found a stiff piece of wire stuck into a type of paste and an amber colored bead. She stared in disbelief at the bead rolling around on her floor. David leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Get all of your money and anything you can't live without. Hurry.”

Sophie nodded and rushed to her bedroom. In moments, she emerged with a small bag, went to her kitchen and poured her savings into her purse. She nodded at David, sure he was right about being quiet, even if she didn't know why and headed towards the door. Trying to stay calm, she locked the door to her apartment and went up the stairs to the outside world.

The cab was still waiting for them as they emerged from the building, though the boy had left. David held the door and bag for Sophie as she clambered into the hansom then handed them in to her. “Thank you for waiting. If you’d just care to take us to where you dropped off the men we were asking about?”

“
Right,” the driver said. Once David was inside the cab, the driver clucked to his horse and they began moving.

Once David had settled into his seat, Sophie leaned forward and whispered angrily “What was that all about? You could have killed me!”

“
No, I couldn’t have,” he said. “There wasn’t anything in the ankle device to explode. All it did was turn on the device in the box when you were near it and scare you enough to not want to go out of your house. The whole thing is quite ingenious, if not strictly ethical.”

“
You mean, they lied to me? About the ankle device?”

“
And about a whole lot more,” David said. “The box in your apartments wasn’t there to let them know where you were. Well, I suppose it was used for that, but I’m not certain that’s what it’s main purpose was.”

“
What was it, then? Just something else to make me to scared to leave my apartments?”

“
No, it’s the reason they didn’t want you leaving. Though it’s far more complex than anything I’ve seen in the journals, I could recognize some of the parts; it’s a radio transmitter.”

“
What’s a radio transmitter?”

David cocked his head at her and his face went blank. It wasn’t until he stopped moving that Sophie realized how much effort he must have been putting in to acting human. She suspected that it has been for the people around them more than it was for her, simply because she didn’t mind when he reminded her he was an automaton, she simply waited for him to become more animated. “It’s a device that can send sounds to someone who has the proper receiver. From what I understand, it would allow people to communicate at a distance, provided all parties involved had the proper equipment.”

Sophie thought about that information for a minute. “So, the box was sending sounds to somebody who could listen to them?”

“
That would be the logical conclusion, yes.”

“
What kind of sounds would they be sending from my apartments?”

“
From what I could tell, it was set up to send any ambient noise, including conversations.”

“
You mean, whoever set that up, was listening to my conversations?”

“
Yes, Sophie, that’s exactly what I mean?”

“
Why?” She asked. “It’s not like I’m saying anything special? And I don’t know anybody important enough to be worth spying on us talking.”

“
That is the question, isn’t it? What makes you so special that the doctor’s who treated you would set up a device to monitor you?”

“
There’s nothin’ special about me except the arms! And they’re the ones that gave them to me after I was pulled out of the mine. I didn’t even ask for them, they put them on me before I could wake up after I was sure I was dead.”

“
Were the doctor’s who operated on you employed by the company that owns the mine or are they separate?”

“
There’s doctor’s at the mine to patch people up if they get hurt working there, everybody sees them every now and then. If you get hurt real bad, you’re sent off to hospital but it’s the doctor at the mine who helps you out after you get fixed at hospital. The doctor I met when I woke up wasn’t one I’d ever met at the mine or at the hospital. But, that would make sense, because I’d never been to the place they sent me home from. Maybe it’s a new one? Some kind of private place, maybe, that’s just for the people who can afford it?

“
Why would they take you there?” David asked. “You are common as clay, by your own admission there’s nothing special about you, so why would they take you to a hospital to have a very rare, very expensive surgery performed on you after a cave in that should have killed you?”

That stumped her. “Maybe there was somebody visiting? Somebody with money? So’s when they saw I was the only one what survived they took pity on me?”

“
Did you ever meet this mysterious benefactor?”

“
Well, no,” Sophie admitted. “But maybe they didn’t want anybody to know? Maybe they’re like one of those folks in the stories, that do nice things for strangers and don’t want anything in return?”

“
Do you think the prince was there visiting and fell in love with you?” David said, his voice doing a very good imitation of a scoff. “Or some rich lord’s son?”

“
Course not,” Sophie said. “But maybe the tenderhearted daughter of -”

“
That’s even less likely. For someone who’s seen as much of life as you have, Sophie, you sure do have some odd notions of human nature.”

Her cheeks colored and she stared down at her hands, examining them again in the perpetual twilight of the cabs interior. They seemed new to her, as though she’d just gotten them and was trying to figure out how they worked. She could feel the gears moving with the muscles in her back and shoulders and wondered suddenly what they looked like, if somebody could see them moving under her skin.

“
You’re right,” she said softly. “You’re right, David, it was silly. I know that. But, why else? Why me? If they weren’t saving me to be kind, why not just let me die in the cave?”

“
If all that was at stake here was your life, Sophie, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, it would seem that you have been caught up in something much larger than yourself. And, to that, I’m not sure it was ‘you’ that was saved. I suspect, though I hope I’m wrong, that you were merely an appropriate specimen and not a girl who was saved at all.”

The cab stopped and the driver opened a hatch on the roof. “We’re here,” he said and snapped it shut again.

Sophie made a show of gathering her few things as David got out. With her back turned, she dabbed at the corner of her eyes with her skirt, determined not to show that David’s revelation had wounded her. She knew he was trying to act human but he was so cold, she wasn’t sure he was ever going to be able to do it. When she emerged blinking into the sunlight, she listened to the driver telling David what direction he’d seen the men go in.

“
The three of them got out and went down that way, between the backs of the buildings over there.”

“
All three men were on their feet?” David asked. “The two weren’t carrying the one?”

“
Naw, they was all three moving on their own, though the one they carried to the cab was walking hunched over, like he wasn’t moving good. I figured he was steady enough to walk but they were going the back way so he wouldn’t be sick on the street.”

“
Thank you, sir, for your information,” David said and looked at Sophie.

She fumbled for her purse and blushed as she did it. “Yes, thank you. You’ve certainly earned everything you’ve asked.”

The driver took the fare from her and ran his thumb over the coins. “You seem like you’re in a tight spot, miss, and I don’t like seein’ folk in your condition bein’ takin’ advantage of. If you need a driver again, you send for George at the post and I’ll see you get where you need for a fair price.”

“
Thank you, George,” Sophie said. “I’ll remember that.”

He touched his whip to the brim of his hat and drove off. The neighborhood he’d left them in was considerably nicer than the one she lived in, nicer even than David’s, though there were shops mixed in unabashedly with the houses, with homes obviously occupying the floors above. Homes and businesses had doors that emptied into the close street the driver had directed them toward, with bins and boxes piled near them, waiting to be collected.

David led the way, moving carefully in the narrow alley, and stopped beside the largest pile of boxes. A bunch of small wood planks were tied together and lined with a heavy fabric, looking slightly like the front part of a corset if it were made of wood instead of fabric. Half the sticks were broken, some clean through, in a straight line.

“
I don’t think you killed him, Sophie.”